World of Dungeons by John Harper

2018-11-18 update: World of Dungeons is now available for legal download at dungeon-world.com.

John Harper has made some fantastic games; I’m familiar with Agon and Lady Blackbird, both of which are outstanding in their own fashion. So when I learned that he was offering his “World of Dungeons” as a stretch goal for Kickstarter, I was super excited.

World of Dungeons is a complete short roleplaying game that answers the question "If Dungeon World was the latest version of a classic roleplaying game, what would the original look like?

Here we have a hack (Dungeon World is a descendant of Apocalypse World) that is being hacked such that it could stand in as the originator of the gaming hobby. This is interpolation at its best. I love it.

So what’s in it? There are two versions, the old blue print with aged paper look and the clean B&W for printing version. Both PDFs are otherwise identical. The PDF is 3 pages long. The first page contains two character sheets. The second page contains rules on equipment, hirelings, magic, character creation, and rolling the dice. And the final page has an old school drawing, an advancement chart and suggested names.

These rules are yours to bend to your will! You may find it natural to expand, redact, and modify them as you your game goes on. We advise keeping an open mind and lively discussion of possibilities at the table.

World of Dungeons

Is it enough to go from? Yes, if you are willing to improvise. These simple rules are a complete distillation of the player side of Apocalypse World and serve as an excellent foundation for building other hacks.

Mind you, there is precious little help for the Game Master, but then again, the originators of the hobby were making things up as they went along.

The rule are very light, because, most anyone that is downloading the PDFs are already intimately familiar with the various tropes and are likely part of the collective gamer memory. And if you need some help on what the GM moves are, I’ve provided a handy translation from Empires Strikes Back to Dungeon World.